Hot Cross Buns
by Mala
Summary: What if Lorelai isn't the only one who dreams? The only one *with* dreams? L/L. Season 3.


Title: "Hot Cross Buns"   
Author: Mala  
E-mail: malisita@yahoo.com  
Fandom: "Gilmore Girls"  
Rating/Classification: PG-13, Luke/Lorelai-ish, Luke POV.  
Disclaimer: I heart Amy Sherman Palladino and I'm just borrowing Luke again.  
Summary: Based off the season three premiere. What if Lorelai isn't the only one who dreams?  
Dedication: To Dare, because I never would've considered writing more "Gilmore Girls" fic had she not paved the way with her wit and her skill.   
  
People with a lot of nervous tension have falling dreams. Not that he has nervous tension. Or falling dreams. He's just been listening to Babette entirely too much. Which is funny since he hasn't seen her in a few weeks. Something about cats and gnomes and an impending invasion of one or the other. He's not sure he wants to know. At any rate, Babette's sage advice has a tendency to sink in like a good deep grass stain.   
  
And it is equally hard to wash out.  
  
But, anyway, he doesn't have falling dreams.  
  
Just Lorelai dreams.  
  
And the sense of getting the wind knocked out of him and hitting ground hard...?  
  
Is exactly the same.  
  
He's usually doing something mundane and Luke-like...fixing rain gutters or sticking a fork in a toaster or pouring a cup of coffee with a side of growl. And then she's there. Smiling and blue-eyed and smelling like some perky flower...pansies or lilies or daisies. Saying something about Dexy's Midnight Runners or a sale on cow alarm clocks at the home goods store...and placing her hand on his belly, where he feels their twins kicking. *Twins*. She's holding out for Bonnie and Clyde . He's voting for Woodward and Bernstein. Rory put in her vote for Peaches and Herb.  
  
"No, kid of MINE is being named 'Peaches'," he assures, shaking a squirming baby goat--sometimes an oven mitt or something else of a fuzzy nature--at his wife and stepdaughter.  
  
And, at that point, he wakes up in a cold sweat, knowing Jess, with his perpetual smug smirk, is probably smirking in his *sleep* somewhere across the apartment because he KNOWS.  
  
Half the TOWN probably has some vague idea. Forget cable t.v. In Star's Hollow, people are such busybodies, they probably stand two feet to the left of the t.v. and jiggle the rabbit ears just to pick up the 24 Hour "I Love Lorelai" marathon in his head.  
  
Yeah, he hits ground hard all right. Damp, dewy, morning ground and the grass stains sink in deep...  
  
She's equally hard to wash out.  
  
No. Harder.  
  
Because he's been trying to do it for years.  
  
***  
  
He tried replacing her regular with decaf. Something along the lines of the Folger's Crystals experiment. But to no avail. She was too smart for him. At least where coffee was concerned. Even all the books he kept reading on pregnancy and the first trimester and chemicals impacting the fetuses...none of that had impact.  
  
"I practically shot coffee intravenously while I was pregnant with Rory," she liked to point out, "And she turned out fine!"  
  
Rory. A beautiful, funny, Ivy League student who didn't even jaywalk. How could anyone argue with that logic?  
  
Of course, he'd given up trying to argue with Lorelai a long time ago. He just settled for trying to keep her fed on something more substantial than leftover Chinese and Ring Dings and kissing her silent when she ranted about something like the Injustice Of Pay Toilets.  
  
He wasn't a man with goals set too high. He was aiming for mediocrity at best. But, as a husband, apparently, he was scoring higher than expected.  
  
"You're virile," Miss Patty had told him accosting him one day outside the boxcar. "That's why she's got TWO buns in the oven, Luke."  
  
He could do with never hearing THAT again.  
  
Except that Lorelai had taken to using it as her "let's have sex" line. She would lean forward, dropping her voice to a low pitch and adopting a distinctly Latin accent, touch his arm and murmur, "You're virile."  
  
Miss Patty saying it didn't get him particularly hot. But his wife...? His crazy, mouthy, caffeine-addicted wife? After Woodward and Peaches were born, he was fairly certain they were going to wind up with a whole new set of junior Danes. Either that or really remarkable baked goods.  
  
He would gladly raise a tray of a dozen of muffins with Lorelai.  
  
"Peach Melba and Four Herb Quiche," suggested Rory instead.  
  
"You're insane. You and your mom both."  
  
"You love us."  
  
"Despite my better judgment. Yeah. I do."  
  
***  
  
There are a few people who, in his mind, have been put on this earth just to give him a crick in the neck. Taylor and Jess are the primary players... with occasional appearances by Kirk and She Who Depletes Him of Coffee and Sense. Not that she's been depleting lately. Well, sense, yes...coffee, no.  
  
Taylor's motives are purely civic. His nephew's...? Quite possibly impurely pelvic. He's been spending so much time with his lips attached to his new girlfriend's that people are beginning to wonder if he has gills so he can breathe.  
  
"Luke...I was walking my troop of Brownies through the park this afternoon and they got a nasty eyeful courtesy of That Jess!"  
  
"Luke...I had to swat That Jess and that girl away from my storefront with a broom! Customers were starting to get nauseous!"  
  
Never mind that at Al's Pancake World, there were several other reasons to get sick to your stomach.  
  
Luke is starting to think that the reason he has no social life of his own is because Jess has filled the family quota. Not, of course, because he's an anti-social ogre who keeps shooting death looks at Lorelai every time she pauses outside his door.  
  
She winds up running off like a scared rabbit. And he pictures her little Playboy bunny cotton tail twitching and has to accidentally-on purpose douse himself with a pitcher of iced tea instead of stalking outside, grabbing her by the arm, and reminding her that Batman and Robin need three square meals a day if they're going to be born healthy.  
  
Much better to stand around dripping with tea in front of customers. Much. He's insane enough as it is without letting her in on the exact details of his condition.  
  
Not to mention the fact that he has to inform his nephew that he might consider legally changing his name to That Jess.  
  
***  
  
"You are," he told her, wincing even as she crushed his hand in a vise grip, "being remarkably calm about this."  
  
"Would...you...hi!hi!hi!...rather...I...hi!hi!hi!...scream 'I hate you, you did this to me' over and over while swearing like a...hi!hi!hi!...sailor?"  
  
"No...I'm just not used to this much sense. You even babble incoherently in your sleep."  
  
"I do not!"  
  
"Ask Mutt and Jeff in sixteen hours. They'll corroborate my story."  
  
"It...hi!hi!hi!...better...not...be sixteen...hours...how the HELL did I get through this with Rory?"  
  
"You were younger?"  
  
"I hate you! You did this to me!!!!!!!!!!"  
  
Maybe he was biased, but even covered in a fine sheen of sweat with her feet in stirrups, his wife was beautiful. He'd offered to stand between her legs with a catcher's mitt, but that had been quickly vetoed in favor of ritual finger breakage and focal points.  
  
But he wouldn't trade it for the world.  
  
He just wondered what the hell had taken him so long to get here.  
  
***  
  
His Lorelai dreams are coming pretty regularly, every night. To the point where he's seriously considering getting a prescription for asthma medication...or maybe lining the floor next to his bed with egg crate foam so he doesn't land quite so hard.  
  
But, then again, given how annoyed Jess was by the "That Jess" suggestion of a few weeks back, he's liable to wake up and find the foam gone and a knot on the back of his head.  
  
Maybe it's just him, but the new girlfriend and all that PDA has done nothing to lift the hefty chip from Jess's slouched shoulder.  
  
"But Uncle Luke, I just want to be like you when I grow up. Old, bitter and misogynistic."  
  
"Shut up and clean out the grill. And don't call me 'Uncle Luke'."  
  
Besides, he can't be a misogynist if he's dreaming about putting buns in a woman's oven, can he? Subconsciously, he obviously likes women a lot. Or at least ONE woman. Or baked goods. But he'd like to think a whole summer's worth of sweaty sheets and near-heart attacks is about more than pastry.  
  
He really doesn't have nervous tension.  
  
Really.  
  
Except when the bell on the door jingles and the person on the other side of the glass ignores the flipped-over 'Closed' sign and she's standing there ...across the room...counter space and canyons between them. She has Lorelai hair and Lorelai eyes and a sad, trembling, lower lip. And he wants to tell her that he knew she would get her figure back, that she's beautiful and he's missed her, and he loves her, but his tongue is thick and the words don't come. Which is a good thing, because of all the potential statements, the last is the worst. The craziest.  
  
The truest.  
  
So he just listens. Offers a few paltry words of comfort and forgiveness. And stares. He's good at staring. Almost better at it than being virile. Although, he won't find *that* out for sure for a few more years.  
  
Lorelai realities are a thousand times better than Lorelai dreams.  
  
But the sense of getting the wind knocked out of him and hitting ground hard...?  
  
Is exactly the same.  
  
--end--  
September 30, 2002.  
  



End file.
